


The Virgin Soil Of The Spirit

by PlinytheYounger



Category: Don Carlos | Don Carlo - Verdi/du Locle/Méry
Genre: Backstory, M/M, cardinal de cisneros content warning, carlos attempts to solve a problem, posa saves the day, some serious miscataloging in the university of alcala, spanish inquisition content warning, teenagers reading suggestive 10th century andalusian poetry in hebrew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlinytheYounger/pseuds/PlinytheYounger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos would like to be the model of a virtuous Prince, but all that Providence has handed his way is some non-theological poetry, a bucket of varnish, a lot of feelings, and the beginnings of some serious doubts about the Spanish Inquisition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Virgin Soil Of The Spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).



The great Cardinal de Cisneros had founded the University of Alcala entirely through his own efforts and his own expense, for the glorification of God. It was he who, in selfless and total devotion to the state and to the church, had bought so many of the books which now graced its towering library. It was he who had instituted the study of Latin, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew so that the words of God might be illuminated in their every form, as though through a prism, in the _Complutensian Bible_.

The great Cardinal de Cisneros, surely, could not have been responsible for the manuscript, the contents of which met the innocent ears of Carlos, Infante of Spain, in the college dormitories.

His fellow student cleared his throat. Nothing, Carlos thought, could be worse than “ _caress the lovely girl's breasts all through the night_ ” –

“Get drunk,” Diego read, haltingly but triumphantly, “and knock at the door of the graceful gazelle!”

“ _Knock at the door_ , that is,” he repeated with a certain emphasis, to make his point clear. Unspeakable shame overwhelmed Carlos. If Rodrigo had been there, his abjection would have been complete; but Rodrigo was quarantined with a fever. He never thought he would have been thankful for it, and cursed himself for the thought.

“Diego, where did you _find_ this?” called out Miguel.

“They have given me special access to the library, since I am such a prodigy,” Diego said, “and since I'm a good fellow, I've brought back something interesting for you!”

“Tell us the part with the breasts again --”

“With the thighs --”

“With her _moon-like eyes_ – ” cried out one romantic.

And then there really _was_ a knock at the door. With a mad flurry Diego stowed the manuscript under his meagre blanket, and snuffed his candle between thumb and fingertip to give no smoke. They lay very still in the sudden dark. It was one of the lay brothers.

“What's kept you up so late?” he called out. “I'll be waking you for Mass tomorrow.”

“Nothing,” they said, and “nothing! Nothing!”

Of course, all sorts of things were smuggled into the dormitories – dice and playing cards and letters of assignation – but this seemed far, far more dangerous, for all that it was in the library.

And poor Diego was not a king's son, or even a very rich man's son – his scholarship to the university was paid by the Cardinal and by the royal family, on the basis of his exceeding holiness, and his genius for languages. He had thought of nothing except translation, morning to night, for the last seven years of his life; he lived in the snippets of books doled out to him, and not in the iron world of rules, and consequences. If the lay brothers found _him_ with that manuscript --

Everyone else had fallen asleep. He shook Diego awake.

“Wake up! You might not realise what you have with you, but I do,” Carlos said. “I understand what the manuscript means, and that's why I must act!”

“Carlos? Do you really mean...? I didn't realise, I --” Diego's look of gratitude was striking, and touched Carlos to the heart. He imagined this was exactly how St Justus had looked when his schoolboy companion, St Pastor had agreed to be martyred with him by the Emperor Diocletian. In fact, Diego went as far as to stroke the curly ends of Carlos' hair from emotion. But this was an unseemly homage for a young prince to receive, to whom his subjects were equally upright in Christ. He had to make Diego realise that this was only the right, the just thing to do.

“I will take the manuscript. You must be saved.”

“Oh,” Diego said, “Oh. Of course. The manuscript.” He had meant to gladden Diego, but Diego's face fell. He was so good that he could not stand to put Carlos in danger instead of himself.

He gripped Diego's shoulder gently. “Don't worry about anything any more. I must think like the Emperor Augustus, who, when he saw how many conspiracies had been made against his life, said it was better to die than to value himself so highly he became a burden upon suffering humanity. ”

And Diego must have been very frightened, because he trembled a little, and took a long while, after Carlos had taken the manuscript to hide under the slats of his own bed, for his breathing to even out and to sleep.

*

Carlos' first thought was simple: that he was the Prince, and he could hide it himself without such ill fortune as would meet Diego.

But he was the Prince, and his father's son. And he knew his father; or rather, he knew that he didn't know him, nor what he was capable of. Nor how angry this might make him.

His father had given him the same treatise that _his_ father had been raised on, so that he too would not fall into sordid or low ways and be raised as a Christian prince.

He could say that he had taken this blasphemous book out of curiosity, or made an honest mistake – but what sort of honest mistake could there be for the helmsman of a Christian nation? What sort of curiosity could there be for someone who had to know better?

The treatise on ruling his father had given him had said that God had given men and angels free will, because it was not glorious to rule over bondsmen who were cowed with fear. But Carlos shook at the knees like a dumb calf himself when he came before his father.

He wanted so much to love his father! It seemed he could make his schoolfellows love him, and his teachers love him when he was a little less stupid at his books than usual, but his father's heart had no written guide, no instruction. And he knew that he had not made himself altogether untouchable by being his son.

*

The next thing Carlos decided on was to hide the manuscript inside one of the desks in the lecture theatre. At first, tucking it into the desk by the far wall, which stuck frequently, and was seldom used, seemed sensible enough, but then he thought with horror on his successor in that seat, one day to be unfairly framed for his, Carlos', crime.

Inspiration struck him as though from Heaven: the carpenters at the Chapel of St. Ildefonso were varnishing its ceiling. He had Mass there the next morning; he could take some of the resin from their pots into a little shaving of wood, and then smear it over the desk, and seal it for eternity with its dangerous cargo.

The lecture the following afternoon was impossible to follow: Carlos' heart was racing too swiftly. Every time his hands ventured boldly inside his doublet, his teacher's gaze seemed to fix on him, and him alone, and he froze in his seat, sure he was being watched.

At last, as the students began to file away, Carlos was invisible in the general commotion. He eased the desk up – began to slip the manuscript into the gap between lid and inkwell – reached for the resin in his pocket –

and found the Cardinal leaning right over him.  
“What do you have there, “ he said, “that's so much more interesting than my lecture?”

“It's a letter,” Carlos stammered out, “from my tutor. Juan de Honorato. About...Trinitarianism.”

“Trinitarianism? I never knew you to take such a keen interest. And, say, is this the Sabellian or Pneumatomachian heresy you find yourself defeating?”

“Arianism,” Carlos said. “It's about. Arianism. And how the Son is. Not really anything like. I mean. No. No, the Son is exactly like – formed in the image of - actually, the Son is – the Son is identical in all respects, and Athanasius was a very great man and never cut off any man's arm for magic purposes, Sir.”

“ _Carlos_ ,” he said, “allow me to have a look at this.”

“I, ah, I am sure you wouldn't be interested, sir, it – ”

“It certainly would seem to take a very novel approach to an old theological problem, if you've summed it up correctly, my son.”

“Please don't look at it, Sir!” Carlos sprung right up. The Cardinal began to reach past him. He tried to stand in front of him, and then clasped at him in entreaty. His hands landed stickily on the Cardinal's shoulders, and then could not be removed. Attempting to pull them away only made the problem worse. He hauled the Cardinal – now red in the face – forward, and, trying to remedy his mistake, pushed him back again. Finally he pulled one hand free with such surprised force that he came dangerously close to boxing the Cardinal on one ear.

“Your Highness! A fainting spell!”

It was Rodrigo, who rushed to support him on one arm as though Carlos really was fainting – and as though he hadn't had a fever for the past few days himself. There was only a dew of sweat on his brow, and his eyes were bright.

“He says he has a letter,” the Cardinal said, “I simply wanted to see it. From his tutor.”

He sounded a little defensive now – albeit still stuck to Carlos – as though he thought he really had caused the Infante to faint. Carlos went limp, which wasn't hard to do, under the circumstances. Rodrigo hoicked him up by the underarms, and gently prised his other hand away from the velvet of the Cardinal's gown.

“I'm sorry,” Carlos said, “I was...falling and I....”

“Get his Highness water!” the Cardinal called. One of the manservants rushed out to get it. Carlos sat heavily on his chair, and let himself fall on top of the desk. Rodrigo's arm pillowed his head just in time. He smelt more of clean grass than of the sickroom.

“Your Highness,” Rodrigo said, “Did you mean this letter?” He unrolled a sheet of parchment.

Oh, my Rodrigo, Carlos thought, you mean all the best, and you have undone me. My father will understand – my father must understand – we'll ensure the news never reaches my father --

But by some feat of legerdemain it was not the manuscript after all; he must have been bringing Carlos some of his correspondence already.

“But this is a letter from the Duchess of Parma,” the Cardinal said.

“His Highness esteems his aunt Margaret highly,” Rodrigo said.

“All the same, he should not have ignored the lecture for his family. We are under instructions to teach you discipline, young man.”

“Discipline,” Carlos said faintly, “Trinitarianism.”

“Overcome by family feeling,” the Cardinal said, “All right. Don't do it again.”

Carlos really _did_ collapse once he had left the room.

“My Rodrigo! You were just in time! I don't know how you knew --”

“You must take better care of your health, Your Highness,” Rodrigo said. "Perhaps some fresh air."

His hand was a little too casual in touching his doublet, and Carlos at last understood where the manuscript had disappeared to. 

*

The university's facade was carved with flowers in silvery stone, and the frozen traceries of leaves; the path that took them beyond it was chequered with ragged weeds and buttercups, and muddy with the river's spring thaw.

The strangest thing was that the ceiling of the sky looked closer and more ordinary – a little overcast – than the endless blue-and-gold symmetries of the chapel vault, which was carved in stars upon stars.

They were a mile or so from town when Rodrigo touched his shoulder, and said, too casually, “And what's the cause of all this trouble?”

“I am heir to the throne of Spain,” Carlos said, not knowing how else to tell Rodrigo what a terrible web he was caught in, “But I am a Christian first and foremost. And I, too, must take up my cross, or Christ will have none of me.”

“Yes?” said Rodrigo.

He took the manuscript from the folds of Rodrigo's doublet.

“ _My heart's desire, my eyes' delight...._ ” Carlos began haltingly, and then continued to declaim, inevitably, through the whole, yoke-bearing, night-and-day-spending, nectar-of-the-lips-drinking work, “ _I took off his clothes, and he took off mine. I sucked at his lips and he suckled me._ ”

“This,” Carlos said, “This is my cross.”

Rodrigo, to his astonishment, looked as though he was suppressing a fit of laughter.

“I don't know what to do about it,” Carlos said. “I thought I might hide it in a saddlebag leaving town –– then that I could keep it in a desk – and you see how well that turned out.”

“But how did this come to you?”

“Di – one of our classmates took it,” Carlos said. “From who-knows-where in the library.”

“And what did he mean to do with it?”

“I didn't ask; I was too busy saving him from himself. But that it came from the library - that we say it came from the library - cannot be an impregnable defence for us!”

The sound of the river was in his ears, fast and endless. “I don't know whether our best hope is to cast it away. The Cardinal cannot really have meant –”

“No, the Cardinal was not much of an archivist!” Rodrigo said, grimly. “But perhaps we may be better ones. I might not know what purpose it served to write this, but I doubt you or I could comprehend that.”

He walked a few steps onward, and took Carlos' arm.

“Or even the lecturers here. Only God may read our hearts, or the ends of our intentions, or our works. And so the judgement of these matters is not to be made on earth. Even men's tongues are so various; I doubt their writings should be more so.”

“And it's beautiful,” Carlos said, without meaning to, and without looking at his friend.

“Carlos?”

“When I read - _if there is life in your soul, then revive me, but if you want to kill me, then kill me!!_!” Carlos said, “I could have wept! You can tell that he was sincere! If mistaken!”

“Carlos?”

“I just mean - ” Carlos said, “If there's a way to save the manuscript - ”

“And yourself!”

“-I'll take it.”

*

Rodrigo slept just above Carlos, when he was not feverish, and the students altogether were asleep a few hours after sundown, when no one was reading erotic literature out to them.

In the early watches of the night Carlos called out: “Rodrigo?” and then, when he received no answer, hauled himself up level with his friend's sleeping form, one knee braced on his bunk.

“Rodrigo!” he said, and tapped at his shoulder.

Rodrigo's whole body started for a moment, and his hand flew to his hip; then he opened his eyes, and smiled. He shushed Carlos, and took his hand, so he could climb all the way up.

Carlos had had a grand scheme when they were younger to communicate all their most private thoughts of brotherhood and friendship in Ancient Greek, only his Greek had never been up to the task of saying more than the number of ships he'd dispatched to Mitylene; so they had taken to whispering.

He laid his head next to Rodrigo's ear and said, very quietly: “Where did you put it?”

“It is in the Cardinal's personal collection now,” Rodrigo replied, “if anyone will be troubled over it, let it be the dead.”

“Rodrigo!”

“And I have edited the dictionary catalog, a little.”

 _“Rodrigo!”_ He was both scandalised and delighted.

“It is now a work of very obscure theology,” Rodrigo said. “Who knows, we may have been too poor scholars of Hebrew to know. A metaphor. But I believe it is safe for now.”

“A metaphor for what?” Carlos said.

“A higher, rather than an earthly love,” Rodrigo said. “A union which is the image of union with the Good. You can only use what you know as a signpost to the unknowable.”

“My Rodrigo,” Carlos said, “You are ahead of your time.”

“We have kept that work for a happier age,” Rodrigo said. “How _is_ your Aunt Margaret?”

“Sterner and sadder every day,” Carlos said, “she reproached me greatly for confounding the Dukes of Horn and Guelders, whom she cannot afford to offend as Governor of the Netherlands. And she says her hands are tied.”

Rodrigo turned to chafe Carlos' own hands between his.

“How can she say her hands are tied?” Carlos said. “I don't think anything can really be impossible for her, or for us.”

And Rodrigo said: “Oh, my Carlos,” in the dark, as though really touched, and astonished, and gathered him closer. Carlos touched his cold feet to Rodrigo's warm calves, and laid his head on his shoulder, as though they were schoolboys five years ago. His dear friend's arms were as fine and tensed as steel; they had made him the terror of the practice-ground. But embracing Rodrigo in turn, familiarly, he felt as though a tight bond around him had been cut, and he could breathe at last.

He leant his head into Rodrigo's hair, and thought about nothing for a long time, before he remembered his friend's word about the allegorical nature of the text. Yes, he thought, it was like the _Song of Songs_.

Of course, there was no sucking at lips in the _Song of Songs_ , but probably, that, too, could be metaphorical.

No one in the _Song of Songs_ , though, argued about whether they had done something sinful, or mentioned being _under my yoke_. Carlos had not really understood that, but now, suddenly, he had the terrible feeling that the yoke was the weight of the lover's body, just as –

He opened his eyes with a start. Rodrigo was asleep, as untroubled and peaceful as the effigy of a warrior-saint. He saw a purpose in everything, and he had a purpose in everything; he had miscatalogued that most secular of texts among the holiest of the canon without a doubt, because he saw not earthly, but spiritual, beauty in it.

But Carlos could only see, now, the forehead of lilies, and the nectar of his lips, and fawns and gazelles and ibexes; a wild creature, paused on the verge of flight, in the tawny curve of Rodrigo's neck and the pulse beating there. Maybe when he finished his quadrivium he would see something philosophical in it, something unfleshly, _soror et sponsa mea_ , but for now all that he could see was something he had had no words for before.

How could he say that a work which Rodrigo had so eloquently defended had left him suddenly helpless like this? He thought of his reading; he thought of the noble example of Alexander the Great, who kept aloof from the captured women of Darius, but this seemed to help less than he had hoped. He felt like St Augustine at the gates of Carthage.

On Rodrigo's body he tried to read the honourable principles which animated him; the charity with which he defended the helpless, the vistas he had opened to Carlos of better and kinder and freer worlds, and not the vanishing, sensual form of his one bared shoulder, his downy cheeks, the sharp line of the collarbone.

A helpless tenderness had poured into him. He sat watching his friend sleep, and longed to paint that, and only that, for his icon. His living lovely friend. It had not seemed to ache that he so delighted in Rodrigo tugging him by the arm to show him something, because he had always thought that he was glad just to be treated as a fellow man, and not a Prince, but now thought for a long moment of Rodrigo leading him, just like that, and tugging at the corner of Carlos' shirt –

Not what you stand for, not what you point to, not what you mean, you, you, _you_ , I want you! Carlos thought, and almost wept with it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to feuillyova, lifeisyetfair, MissM, sathinfection and shelomit-bat-dvorah for beta-reading, encouragement, and historical and literary inspiration!!


End file.
